Emotion-Image Therapy. Analysis and Implementation. Nikolay Linde
but I remember what I was two years ago. It was terrible, I don’t want to be like that anymore”. She met her boyfriend and got married.
Why are these models describing how problems appeared important for the EIT method? First, because they show how to look for the initial conflict properly, using for this purpose images, expressing problem emotional state. Second, because these models prompt how you can remove the initial conflict, when its origin is discovered, if you use an adequate mode of impact. Modes of impact are oriented at a particular origin of emotional fixation, and they always have the same aim which is to help liberate from some emotional fixation. The main methods of working with initial conflicts will be described further on.
Buddha long ago spoke about the role of attachment, and Sigmund Freud long ago spoke about the role of libido fixation on some object. But why does an attachment or a fixation on this particular object occur? Psychology actually doesn’t answer this question. However, a more detailed analysis of scheme one may clearly show how it happens at, so to speak, micropsychological level. Let us remember the metaphor about the monkey that grabbed the bait in in a hollowed up pumpkin and could not pull out its fist, see Fig. 3.
Figure 3a
Figure 3b
On Figure 3 [a, b] we analyze psychological problem of type one and its possible solution in greater detail. Besides the aim, the desire and the barrier it shows a “phantom paw” [an arrow above the barrier] by which a person is holding his aim or his barrier. A small heart shows the feelings that the person has for the desirable object. It is this “phantom paw” that a person cannot or does not want to unclench to let go the aim or the barrier determines his dependence and chronic negative emotions he feels. It determines further painful forms of adaptation to this unnatural situation. And he can’t unclench “the phantom paw” because he put into the object some very important feelings, hopes or even a part of his own personality. When the small heart returns the attraction disappears, which is symbolized be a light arrow directed from the former aim and barrier [pic. 3b]. To resolve other problems different techniques may be used, picture 3 is given as an example.
If a person wants somebody or something he already owns the desirable object in his imagination or is in contact with it. For example, while sitting at the table during some celebration guests look at various dishes put on the table by the hosts they taste these dishes in their mind. You can say that their “virtual mouths” are already eating different dishes, and if some guest likes the imagined taste of food he says: “Would you give me a little of this, please…” That’s why it is so important that food be not only tasty but look nice and appetizing. It means that a person radiates some psychological part of himself which establishes an imagined contact with the desirable object and if this imagined contact is pleasant then the person tries to establish a closer contact with the desirable object, to possess it in some form. It doesn’t always mean physical contact, nor does it always mean absorbing the object, but the subject seeks a desirable actual interaction.
Suppose that one of the guests failed to have the dish which he wanted to taste very much. He may leave disappointed and in his mind leave his “phantom mouth” in this dish, tasting the food when he could still have it. Until this process continues in his mind, he will suffer even if he suffers just a little, feeling sorry about the missed pleasure. After some time he will take his “mouth” out of the imagined dish, will let the dish go and his suffering will stop and he will recover his good health. If he doesn’t do so, he will remember his unrealized desire from time to time and feel disappointed again. He can forbid himself even to think about his loss push his feelings into the area of subconscious, but they will go on influencing his state even from there, and can become a chronic unconscious suffering.
The solution of the problem will be returning your feelings and parts of your personality connected with the desired object. During this process the subject integrates again with lost emotions abs parts of his personality and only then he really lets go the object of his desires. In other case a person may let go the barrier, if he put into it important feelings, but in fact it was an illusion though it prevented achieving normal goals. In the first case the person stops suffering as he doesn’t have conflicting feelings any longer he becomes indifferent to the object. In the second case the subject can achieve the desirable aim, the question is whether it is good.
In other kinds of psychological problems, the task of a psychologist may be, for example, to help the client accept this or that aim or barrier, return the rejected parts of his personality and recover his personal integrity. As a result, the pathogenic emotional state, that causes undesirable or neurotic behavior and/or negative psychosomatic state disappears. When a client complains about a domineering negative state, the image of this state will show the doctor the essence of the emotional fixation which makes the basis of his problems. The doctor’s task is to understand the reasons of the fixation, to help the client realize what these reasons are and get rid of the fixation by, for example, integrating with lost earlier positive feelings and/or parts of his personality. There may be other methods but I’d like to point out one more time that we choose the method which will deliver from ecologically wrong attachment or fixation. You can achieve this by mentally influencing images, but as images are the embodiment of the emotional state of the person, as a result, these states change and the fixation disappears.
Let’s repeat actions may be different. Sometimes it is necessary to let go some offence or forgive yourself some mistakes of the past, sometimes it is necessary “to unclench the paw” to stop holding the image of the sweetheart who was unfaithful, or to say farewell to the dead. Sometimes it is necessary to accept yourself as a loser, to forgive your father who abandoned you, to refuse some inadequate prohibitions imposed by your parents in your childhood, to stop identifying yourself with some pain that you experienced in the past, with shame or any other psychological trauma. The EIT helps the client fulfil these tasks. Chapter six describes various methods of overcoming emotional fixations.
Summary
1. The structure of a psychological problem is determined by fixed energy of desire which can’t be realized because there exists some barrier.
2. Fixed energy of desire is subjectively experienced as agonizing unrealizable feeling which causes suffering becoming a chronic negative emotional state.
3. The reasons which don’t let solve the psychological problem are in the psyche of the person himself.
4. The solution of the problem always presupposes liberation of the person from this or another fixation.
5. The initial problem may be one of the five indicated earlier [see above]. On the basis of the initial problem a person forms six methods of adaptation, which create symptoms and new problems.
6. Problems can be of different levels and types. The level is determined by the degree of the damage of the personality and is a function of the strength of the emotional fixation.
7. The type of the problem is determined by peculiarities of adaptation mechanisms, created by the person to adapt to the existence of the initial fixation.
8. The initial fixation [model one] is determined by the fact that the subject connected in his mind some feelings and/or parts of his personality to have a contact with some object.
9. Liberation from the fixation and the end to suffering may often be achieved when feelings or parts of the personality “invested” before are returned.
Chapter 4. Images and analitical work with them
It is clear from the previous chapter that our aim is to transform “pathogenic” emotional states and images are the means to do it. Images are just a leverage letting to apply an effort for the necessary transformation of emotion. But besides images are an effective means to analyze psychological problems